We each have opportunity to learn from all things, from likely and unlikely sources. It depends most on if we are open to learning.
There’s a long repeated biblical story, that whether I believed in the word or not, challenges me to the core. I pray there’s never a day that I go unchallenged by the account; if so, my strong sense is it is me who is impervious to the learning.
The story goes something like this…
Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.
“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
“No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
Allow us to briefly acknowledge the significant components of the story…
A woman had done something wrong; there was no debate that adultery was wrong.
A crowd had gathered; that means everyone’s actions would be seen by someone else… perhaps a tribe in some ways that all thought alike. No doubt crowds tend to egg each other on, often ramping up emotion and activity.
The crowd attempted to egg on the perceived arbiter of truth in this situation… But what she did was wrong! There is no dispute! How will she be punished?!
In wise judgment, there was calm.
And then it was said… if you have done no wrong, go ahead… punish her… be loud… make it a public spectacle… It’s insightful how once again it’s poignantly clear we are loudest when we believe ourselves clean from the crime. We point fast fingers at those who have done wrong in areas we feel we are absolved, ignoring the places where we have been foolish, fallacious or illicit…
… actually forgetting those places exist.
And here’s the thing. Sometimes that’s been me. I have said some things I’d like to take back — even this week. The errors of my ways, so-to-speak, are not just nice neat, cleaned up stories from my youth. The errors of my ways occur even now.
So allow me to close with two outstanding truths — and why this account is so challenging whether we are Jesus followers or not…
There was no question the woman was wrong; there was no debate. The crowd was right; she was wrong. Note, too, that as the crowd dispersed, she was compassionately called to change her behavior and inherent line of thinking.
But what’s also true based on the wisdom revealed, is that I will never be capable of throwing that first stone, that rock of condemnation, if you will, whether physically or verbally. I can’t do so unless I ignore the equally existent, imperfect parts of me.
That’s the reality we must grapple with now, if we are willing to learn.
Respectfully…
AR